Animation in DAZ, I think I wasted my money - help?
Zantium
Posts: 7
Just to be clear, I like DAZ it's a nice product and I've used it for other things on and off for a few years.
I recently decided to have a dabble with 3D animation, just for personal projects, I've a few "scenes" in my head from sci-fi to comedy sketch type scenarios. Rendering quality wise, it has to look decent but by decent for animation I mean DAZ's live rendering window or 2004+ source engine game type decent.
So with that in mind I looked around at what was available... not a great deal, Poser (never used it), Source Film Maker, DAZ 4.7, Blender and not much else I could find. There were a few others that didn't seem to meet the look/flexibility/ease of use parameters and my pockets aren't really that deep but I was willing to spend around $200/£130 ish.
So, DAZ seemed to have some decent looking animation tools, I was familiar with it for posing as I used it as a tool for producing pose and lighting references for drawing. Never full renders, just form and shadows really... sometimes I'd even just snip the screen and save that.
It looked simpler/cleaner for animation than SFM which is very much in the context of the TF2 game and had great features like aniMate for aniblocks etc that I could save and re-use - brilliant.
So I upgraded to 4.7, bought aniMate2 (couldn't try before hand as I've used DAZ before so it was stuck on aniMate Lite), bought the movie maker pack and some other bits of content to get up and running.
Foolishly, I expected to be able to output animation at a reasonable speed, SFM in the tinker I had with it was able to render at 200-300fps no problem on my i5 @ 4Ghz and Radeon 290X. When I came to rendering with DAZ and just having a single figure on screen and nothing else, it's 18 seconds a frame under Open GL, longer under 3Delight. Ouch.
I looked into it and I needed a renderer plugin to output to render on a GPU, OK, not a big amount for Luxus and I turn a lot of the settings down, it's still about 18 seconds a frame but crap with it (or VERY stylized!).
More digging and the answer perhaps is Decimator but that's another $100 and honestly given that 22,000 polys with a single figure has the results it does, if I use 5k poly figures, by the time I've got a basic scene going I'm right back struggling to render again. Having punted nearly all my budget away already (and feeling very stupid having done so) then I can't really risk spending more.
I'm in a pickle, I appear to have wasted my money on something that will probably render beautiful complete animations/short films eventually but not simpler game level animations with any sort of acceptable framerate. I doubt there's any sort of refund available and despite searching, I can't see a way for DAZ to do anything quickly - it seems weird that I can render it live in the window with no problems what-so-ever in real time yet can't output it at anything approaching 1/50th of the speed.
Have I missed anything obvious? Is there a magic fix, or have I basically wasted my money?
NB I know there are people that output some great looking films in DAZ and dedicate a lot of time and effort in doing so - clearly the potential quality isn't a problem but I just wanted to have some fun in the little spare time I have available.
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Comments
Decimator might save you some rendertime, but reducing the amount of polygons of your figures will make them look simpler and less detailed. If you aim to create a CGI movie using DAZ Studios very detailed human figures, decimating would be IMO the wrong approach for closeups. For a mass scene with many figures in the background barely visible this can save you some time, of course.
Luxrender via Luxus won't save you any rendertime, for Lux's renders (Luxus/Reality) will take much, much more time than rendering in 3Delight. You can save some rendertime if you avoid figures using SSS shaders, using "Deep Shadow Maps" insted of "Raytraced Shadows" (but that can result in pixaleted shadows at their borders). The combination of raytraced shadows and transmapped surfaces, like most hair, will have an impact on rentertime,too.
DAZ Studios Shading Rate will also have more or less impact and should be chosen carefully. The standard 1.0 value will get you more pixalated shadows than a rate of 0.5, but will take less time.
But the most impact on your rendertime will have the specs of the machine you'll render it on.
Since I'm aiming to create animations, too, I experimented a bit. I'm on a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+ at 2.40 GHz, 6 GB RAM and a Radeon HD 4660. I know, it's an older system and far away from the best choice to render animatons on. If I wanted to do it professionally, I'd need the best rig currently available.
Currently, a render with an acceptable quality for shadows and lighting would take me around 14 to 15 minutes. Multiplied with the framerate used (24 or 30 FPS) you can get the amount of time needed to create one second of animation.
If you really aiming to create good quality CGI movies, be it with DAZ Studio, Poser or any other software around, you should bear one thing in your mind: you don't start rendering today and tomorrow you have your project completed. Neither next week, not even next month.
You could check "Jesus Orellana's ROSA", which took him areound 10 months to complete by doing animations in DAZ Studio and then exporting them to Bleder and render them there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG11zhX6_jo&list=PLCC895321A3EB0D4E&index=1
You could also check the production process of Tim Vining and his Star Trek "Aurora" Fan Movie Series (and the dates when the parts had been finished to get a glimpse on how fast one can produce around 15 minutes of film):
http://www.auroratrek.com/production.html
If you still want do animations in DS, you better should save them as "Image Series" rather than a "Movie" and combine those to a movie using a video editor. There are some out there even for free, like VirtualDub. That way you'll be able to pause rendering a scene if you had to and taking up your work on the next frame after you paused. And that way your effort won't be for nothing if Studio should crash during rendering. Which could happen now and then.
Uh, I forgot another hint: the more computers you have available rendering different scenes at the same time will also shorten your overall production time. All you have to look on that way is to keep it legal.
;-)
Poser is more convenient to work with animations, more convenient timeline, more features, just a lot of useful modulators such as wave, wind ..... You can also use the video footage as a texture ....
source filmaker is a game engine
if you are really keen you can use the Unreal3 game engine UDK matinee to do a similar thing for free but is a fair bit of work to set up and involves FBX exporting all your animated figures and Decimator WILL come in handy too as most stuff from DAZ far too high poly
for PAID software iClone is your best bet
I use iClone BTW and carrara but have tried Unreal too as a renderer,
in DAZ studio I use Octane render plugin but that is big bucks
This ((http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atBAnjsyKII) was done in two weeks from start to finish in DAZ Studio (including writing a plugin, actually it was a bet :) )
But when not in a hurry I'm aiming to 40-80 seconds per frame time limit. It allows you to comfortably produce 5-7 seconds of animation (2-3 figures) after you come back home from work and then render them while you sleep. (and then scrap them as they look unnatural :) - kidding here, that's what preview render is for).
As others suggested you should keep the sampling count for pixels, shadows and reflections to absolute minimum that still satisfy you in terms of final image quality. Limit your lights, fake GI with spotlights and AO (diminish sampling here too), deal with AO noise in postproduction.
Also, do not render 4k-sized frames, even HD (1920x1080) is far beyound your needs (note: you have to populate your scene much more densely for HD picture to look interesting thus making render times even longer).
in Carrara i can easily render a frame a second with just characters and no transmapped hair clothes if I use a backdrop and that backkdrop can be animated usually an image series oscillated
in DAZ your option to do this would use a png series with transparency and chromakey it on a video BG Cinegobs keyer is free but most advanced movie editors do it too.
the slowdowns are usually transmaps esp hair so alternatives are a good idea like mesh hair, oddly it actually renders quicker, there are a few fibremesh hairs in store or you can create them using LAMH exporting to geometry
Carrara's render is fast when sampling is low (named 'Object accuracy' and 'Shadow accuracy') but in this mode the aliasing is very visible. When you set them to 0.5 Carrara becomes 'normal' slow renderer :) Add GI, caustics and MB, use some light scattering volumetrics in the scene and it will be 'slow as hell' :)
Actually there is no such thing as 'fast' renderer - it's just how much of image quality you can sacrifice for speed. If the renderer has enough controls to fine tune this - it's a good renderer. And Carrara's is good one :)
Actually DAZ does a have a 30 day refund policy. Click the link at the top of the page for Help, then Contact Us, then Submit a Help Request, and the contact department you want is Sales Support.
Nice work, Anatoly!
What render size would you suggest?
I used rather exotic 960x540 - it is equally easy to downscale to 480p or upscale to 720p :)
For my current project I'm using standard 720p - 1280x720, but I've switched to Octane as renderer (well, actually I use hybrid Octane + 3Delight, now considering adding Carrara into mix too :) )
He actually rendered most of it in DAZ Studio. Blender was for modeling, modifications and physics VFX added in post.
In a BlenderNarion interview, Jesus said, "I used Daz Studio as the base program, everything was planned, animated and rendered in Daz Studio. I used Blender to model and modify props, as well as for all the physics like for example cloths, plastics or blood that were later added in post-production to the Daz Studio Renders."
http://www.blendernation.com/2011/11/22/rosa/
That actually makes sense as it's only been recently that you can get much from Studio into Blender without standing on your head and doing special incantations. He worked on it in 2010 and 2011.
I can remember a couple idiots (DAZ haters) over at Rendo in the Poser forum insisting it couldn't have been done in DAZ Studio because the hair moved and there's no dynamic hair in Studio... Duh! Many hair sets have morphs and you can animate those.
Not only morphs, it has D-Form :)
Yup, that, too! :)
As DForm's components are common nodes in the scene you may make hierarchies with them. With spline-controlled influence (and now even more powerfull with weightmap support) they may emulate softbody behavior. I used these tricks to animate girl's dress in the above-mentioned short.
Yea ya pretty much wasted ya money buy Icone and use daz as a character and prop generator. I bought all that stuff you did and was not happy with the end result. I found that Iclone was the solution I was looking for. I buy daz props, figures and animations just to use them in Iclone. I just render pictures in daz thats what it is really good for.
Rendering in DAZ is killing, though the shaders are nice.
There is a FREE script somewhere on this forum that gives you few Rendering Template with different Quality level. Check that out. You can REDUCE the rendering time with DECENT result and you can output your animation in reasonable time. Though I would love a Game Engine in DAZ for rendering.
rendered in 1 minute in dazstudio
http://vimeo.com/110350966
well thats not bad for a minute if 3Delight!!
no that's open Gl with viewport on best and per pixel shading on
that's just an example that you can create very quick animations in studio
that look a lot better than that normal iclone stuff
I tried iclone and do not like it
its easy to use but the rendering is horrible looking
perhaps someone shows me a good looking iclone render with daz people used
lol well obviously not any of mine then
I use Carrara, iClone and Octane render for DAZ studio mostly by the way, I do not believe in app wars and like lots of tools in my toolbox
this uses all 3, maybe you can guess which bits done in which?
Honestly, ICLONE rendering is not bad. Though the saturation level is little low comparing to DAZ. The problem with ICLONE is that the G5 characters have this annoying "stare look" which makes you uncomfortable. The rendering is fast and good. The new native rendering engine in ICLONE6 is even better.
Not to mention Poser has a built in Phsyx engine for Bullet physics and better dynamic clothing controls parameters, and a great working Sub div tool for close up renders,
But to me Daz renders faster, looks better in finished AVI, has less light issues and with the improvement with the pose controls in Daz 4.7 it, has made it much easier for animating hand poses and emotions even when using aniblocks in the timeline
Though still Daz is like most 3d programs animating a project as one person is very hard only because its hard for one person to be able to do everything required for animation , where as a team of people could bring different skills to the table and be able to catch the flaws of the animation that a one person project can't do by themselves
If i could add something to my Daz Studio wish list for animation , it would be Real Time render preview and a Floor lock to set your character objects to the set parameter of the floor instead of being able to travel above or below the floor your trying to keep your character level on. this would help relieve a lot of flaws in your project when animating in daz because you could see the flaws before you render them with real time render preview, and a floor lock has been needed for years..lol
anyways that is my 2 cents
I just watched this made using Unity
Maybe something one can do using DAZ content even and as just a render no game development license needed.
My attempts to use Unreal UDK3 Matinee where kinda sucky though so personally I probably would do no better in Unity but it may suit some.
that was hell of away to wake up..lol great video , I bet a lot of work went into it too
Wow if thats the trailer for a video game that was fricken' brilliant ! Spastic, insane, adrenaline filled, and compelling all in one.
It's not. This short is promotion to present Unity as platform for indie movie production. Read more about it here: http://unity3d.com/pages/butterfly. Especially interesting is list (incomplete) of people involved into this at the bottom of the page :)
It's not. This short is promotion to present Unity as platform for indie movie production. Read more about it here: http://unity3d.com/pages/butterfly. Especially interesting is list (incomplete) of people involved into this at the bottom of the page :)
which is why I linked it here as a demo of using Unity as a render engine.
It's not. This short is promotion to present Unity as platform for indie movie production. Read more about it here: http://unity3d.com/pages/butterfly. Especially interesting is list (incomplete) of people involved into this at the bottom of the page :)
Animations of that quality usually do have quiet a number of people involved. that is why Pixar/Disney films are always so great. they have 100s of people involved in just one film even the shorts films.
I can say at least daz,poser and Iclone can give a single person operation a chance to create & have fun telling stories in animations or still graphics without breaking the bank to do it., I could imagine that having a few thousand dollar budget and a few talented people using daz or iclone could create a fairly entertaining film though :)
one person & software limitations makes it is very hard to catch all the little things so having a few people on a project would be much better.
Community projects too often do not see the finish line :) Creative people tend to do things their way, and not the way you want just because they're creative. So you have to pay them to keep them on the leash and if you pay them - that's not a few thousands anymore :)
So, the "singleplayer mode" is our best option yet and it's pointless to blame any software for inability to pull the finished movie right from my head :)